Monday, June 12, 2017

Tuesday Treasures

We had been here in the pre-digital days of our travels in 2000. This is a photo we took at the time that was framed on our wall for a long time in our house.

Us, on that same trip in Sedona when we woke to a snowstorm and had to shop for some clothes.

Anyway, back to 2013.

Montezuma Castle National Monument, located near Camp Verde, Arizona and features well-preserved cliff-dwellings.

They were built and used by the Pre-Columbian Sinagua people, northern cousins of the Hohokam, around 700 AD. It was occupied from approximately 1125-1400 AD, and occupation peaked around 1300 AD.] Several Hopi clans trace their roots to immigrants from the Montezuma Castle/Beaver Creek area. Clan members periodically return to their former homes for religious ceremonies. When European Americans discovered them in the 1860s, they named them for the Aztec emperor (of Mexico) Montezuma II, due to mistaken beliefs that the emperor had been connected to their construction. The Sinaqua dwelling was abandoned 100 years before Montezuma was born and the Dwellings were not a castle. It was more like a "prehistoric high rise apartment complex.

2000 was the first time that I became aware of these amazing cliff dwellers and have gone on to visit others in the southwest.

This gives a perspective on the size and location that this was built.

They also have a display depicting how they would have lived their daily lives.

About 50 feet west of the main ruin is a much less well preserved complex named Castle B, consisting of a few rudimentary rooms also on several levels.

I love fry bread which we first had in 2000 at the Grand Canyon. Click here for a recipe from the Smithsonian Museum.

Thanks for showing us those amazing historical sites that i might not see in this lifetime. I wonder if they are really on the cliffs even during their time! Is that what the anthropologists say? How do the ancients climb their dwellings? Amazing. I recall the rock cemeteries in Lycia, Turkey which i saw a few years ago. It was also spectacular!

I visited there in the 70s, and was so glad some artifacts were on display in museums, as well as shops with replicas. I still have one little bowl with slip-painted designs from that area (though probably not the right culture!)